


Chrysalis

by NyteFlyer



Category: Donald Strachey Mysteries (Movies)
Genre: Canon Gay Relationship, M/M, Microfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 06:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/647481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyteFlyer/pseuds/NyteFlyer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two men, one cocoon....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chrysalis

  
I had to face facts – Donald was a couch potato. Who could blame him, really? He worked hard, sometimes going weeks at a time without taking a day off. When he did have some time to himself, he liked to spend it barricaded in our apartment, sitting around in grungy underwear and a five o’clock shadow that was actively mutating into a three-day-old beard, eating garbage and scratching whatever he felt like scratching as he stared at the television, preferably with me by his side.  
  
I was more of a social butterfly, I suppose, though the image that brings to mind gives me what my Grandmother O’Connell used to call the collywobbles. I liked people, and I liked to go out, be involved, feel useful – even if it was on my own time rather than on the Senator’s. I had a specific vision of what “feeling useful” entailed, and it had nothing to do with sitting around in my underwear, staring at a 24-inch screen until my eyes glazed over.  
  
Then I met Donald.  
  
Donald Strachey needed me, I mean really _needed_ me, in a way no one had ever needed me before. I don’t mean he just needed me to take care of him, though the first time I looked under the bed at his old apartment, I knew that was always going to be a part of it, too. Beyond that, I mean he needed to be needed by me as well, needed to know he fulfilled my needs, that I’d never take all he had to give then go off to search for something more.  
  
How could anyone ever need more than Donald had to give? What Donald gave me was simply… _everything_.  
  
He hated black-tie events, yet anytime I asked him to, he pulled on “that goddamned miserable monkey suit” I’d “made” him buy and endured cocktail parties and fundraiser banquets, gay rights rallies and political caucuses – anything I’d committed us to attending with or without his expressed blessing. Although he spent a prerequisite amount of time there griping about his too-tight shoes or his watered-down drink, the rubber chicken entrée or the endless speeches, he rarely left my side, making it crystal clear that while he was “bored to tears, Timothy. I mean bored to fucking tears,” he was never, ever bored with me.  
  
Needless to say, the feeling was mutual.  
  
Donald gave up ESPN for TMC.  I overlooked the grungy shorts as long as he covered them with a slightly less grungy bathrobe.  As time went on, I found myself enjoying our nights in more than our nights out. I learned the undeniable comfort and wanton pleasure of cocooning – though in this case, the butterfly shed his wings in the process. Now, with that constant, restless urge to flitter between social and political venues behind me, I’m far more butter than fly, and I’m always willing to pour myself over a certain couch potato whenever those sky-blue eyes of his leave the new flat screen to meet mine.  
  
After we share a refreshing shower and shave, of course.


End file.
